Destructoid's FFXIII review

[kane_magus]

Ha ha ha, oh wow.

I've ranted a bit about it in the past, but this is probably the best (or perhaps "worst" would be a better word) of several similar recent examples* of why Destructoid (a site I used to love, by the way, but now visit maybe once a month or so, if that much) has become only slightly better than completely worthless to me lately. It's really disappointing because it used to be a great site. Still, I admittedly have a kind of vague "just how low will they stoop for page-views next time, I wonder" interest about it as well. It's the whole "train-wreck, can't look away" phenomenon at work.

* - Which I won't link here, because I don't want to give the site any more traffic than that, if I can help it. But if you just can't help yourself, look up the follow ups to the FFXIII review I linked above, their Assassin's Creed II review, or the several articles about Heavy Rain including their review of it, as well as the various rants against indie/art games and the "Counterpoint" articles that invariably show up a few days after the very few good reviews that they give (not counting the 10 out of 10 they gave to Deadly Premonition, because that was merely another "joke" at Heavy Rain's expense). A big impetus for a lot of it is just angry fanboys being angry fanboys, true enough, but even so, I feel there's a lot of legitimate beef to be had with some of the crap the site puts out these days. Not to mention the fact that there are usually a bunch of sycophantic, pro-Destructoid fanboys clogging the comments of these crappy articles lately, too, which is another reason I feel that the site has hit the skids.

In other words, Destructoid went from being a cool site to being just another typical, crappy gaming website, with a similarly typical, crappy gaming "community" to follow it.

Comments

[stuckinacave.livejournal.com]

I have Destructoid in my RSS feeds and I check it often. Ironically, it's their reviews that I find least interesting. Their honest articles are great and it feels like their writers have a unique personality with specific tastes and style and a often a sense of humour.

However, those positives become annoyances when it comes to their reviews because they lack the objectiveness a review should have. While I didn't mind the FFXIII review (his opinion after all...and ironically people's issues with the game are what I'm enjoying about it LOL) it's the Metro 2033 (or whatever year it is) review that got me completely disinterested in their reviews.

To openly 'give up' on a game because you don't believe in how a game is designed is LUDICROUS. His job is to review games and he should have played the game. Not given up. It's great that he pointed out the fault, but what about the rest of the game?

And of course, the "pro-desctructoid fanboys" say that not giving it a number is more credible than assigning it a ficticious number. I agree, but at the same time, no opinion (or 1/3 of an opinion I suppose) is not a valid one either.

In the end, I generally read game sites for articles about games rather than reviews and Destrucoid is one of the better sites I've come across in that regard. I generally regard their site as "fluff" for the most part and take most of what they say as humourous ramblings.

Completely agree with you 100%

[timna45.livejournal.com]

Hear, hear!

I have been frustrated reading Jim Sterling's all-over-the-map "journalism" for a year now, and it's no less cringe-worthy than it was when I first discovered him. (his humor was funny for about the first article that I read by him, but it got old very quickly...)

I find that Jim Sterling is infinitely worse than the 18 year old PS3 fans which he goes out of his way to enrage. Not only do I find the scores on the games he gives to almost be the inverse (or differing within + or - 4 points of the average review on metacritic) of what the games actually deserve (which isn't that big of a deal alone), but his reasoning about why the games are "bad" (or good) are usually very poorly explained, or it becomes apparent that the reason why he liked/disliked the game was based a shallow reason. I find the inflammatory nature of his comments to be consistently irritating, unprofessional and unfunny.

The guy pretty much comes into reviews of many famous games with a preconceived bias, like writing negative articles about Heavy Rain before even playing it, giving some low budget game a "so and so game is BLATANTLY better than... game X". It's really hard to determine if the dude is just an unfunny version of the onion magazine, or is just a pretentious prick who actually does take himself seriously. (I would say both, but I'm leaning more on the latter) I really don't know for sure, but based on his rebuttals, it seems that he is dead serious in most of his comments.

The thing that really gets to me are how he gets so hurt by negative critiques of his disrespectful tone and generally against-the-grain-for-the-sake-of-it writing. What a poor little snowflake. The fact that he simply highlights immature 18 year old comments (low hanging fruit, who are not really reflective of game fans as a whole) is pretty lame too, as there are often quite a few constructive comments who he responds to with a certain level of hostility and defensiveness, if at all.

I also agree that just about every other reviewer on Destructoid is pretty decent, which I found surprising.

Sadly, I think that Jim Sterling will continue to be successful precisely due to his inflammatory humor and the group of (how should I put it... "ass-kisser" groupies?) irritating fans who excuse his rudeness and immaturity. Seriously, just because he writes in all likelihood from a country protecting freedom of speech doesn't mean that toning down his rhetoric wouldn't do the world of gaming journalism a big favor.

The fact that this dude equates "fanboys" of games to be the equivalent of terrorists and religious fundamentalists shouldn't win him any favors with anyone, yet it seems to be that articles like those that get Destructoid most of it's page views, alas.

In some ways, Jim Sterling is the "Xah Lee" of video games. If you don't know who that man is, trust me, you don't want to know.

That said, he really is only a video game reviewer, but I find it appalling that this slacker is adored, when he should be completely ignored, or better yet, fired.